ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the obstacles to achieving good data—the obstacles of too much and too little data, biased data, and various types of inadequate data. If a newspaperman wants to determine the voting intentions of a city’s population, a sample made up of the people he meets at a local bar is likely to be biased. Economists have had to develop many specialized statistical methods to use in lieu of experiments because so many aspects of national economies are not subject to experimentation. The historian can bridge gaps in subject matter with his intuition or imagination. Sometimes there is insufficient subject matter available to support solid conclusions. This obstacle is less likely to appear in experimental work because data can usually be generated in unlimited quantity, subject only to the restriction of cost and available funds. A way to squeeze out more information is to divide up the available units of subject matter into smaller units.
